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The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.

Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
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More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
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The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Flying fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments it stirs our capacity for dreaming.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as a relatively young man of 39 and seemed always to be ill. He was 'high-strung' - intensely neurotic - yet a charismatic personality nonetheless.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.
Joyce Carol Oates
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God's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
Joyce Carol Oates
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...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud poetry overheard.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.
Joyce Carol Oates